Menaka ( मेनका )

Today, when I sit idle for days without reading, writing or working, I am reminded of the time when I had time in my hands and I did not want to have them. Having time in your hand, I believed, showed that you were not doing justice to the purposes for which you have been sent to this world. Every hour, every minute, every second of one’s life needed to be productive, and I firmly believed that your greatest achievements were always in the future. If you felt that you have achieved something great, you were destined to have a mediocre life henceforth. With these ideas in mind, I visited his office.

I had taken up the project to prove that your actions can be identified by detecting the vibrations and disturbances in the molecules of the medium you are in – air or water – with an aim to facilitate the visually impaired to see. And I chose Indraneel Banerjee to be my project guide. Indraneel was popular for not paying attention to student’s projects and was considered to be the easiest professor to complete your project with. But it was not because of this particular reason that I chose him, it was because all the others had rejected my project proposal and he was least bothered about whether I chose what I chose or whether I intended to build a time-machine.

And thus it started.

2nd February, 1989

– You seem like you haven’t bathed for a week.
– No, Sir.

I sat in the laboratory, tweaking with the Audio Receptors when he looked over my shoulder on the screen. It had been two months since I had started the project and those were the first words he spoke to me.

– Why?
– Sir, I think I will have the Receptor detect major vibrations in the air and convert them to digital signals in a few weeks.

He shrugged and went to his office. It was not that he had any special interest in me or what I was doing that he came upto me but the layout of the laboratory was such that he had to cross it to go to his cabin. So, yes, he crossed it many times in a day and that was what he noticed – my unkempt hair and maybe the smell of my sweat.

8th August, 1989

– Are you crazy?
– Why?
– No. You cannot be a maniac. Not in my presence.
– I am not a maniac, Sir. I just think every second of my life needs to be used. Sleeping is a waste of time. Every second you spend sleeping, you lose the possibility of having a spark of an idea. And I am a calculating person, Sir. I am.
– And that would mean you won’t sleep?
– Yes, sir.

I hadn’t slept for a week. I was this close to make the Receptors work underwater and detect vibrations sent out by swimming fishes. I had visited the coast of Odisha to carry out my experiments through a contact that Indraneel had connected me to but I was asked to leave the Marine Laboratory because they were worried I had gone lunatic, that I never slept. How could I? Sleeping is a disease that every living organism is infested with. I had decided to cleanse myself, cure myself of it.

– Sleeping is not a disease. (He shouted) It’s a way to make your brain function smoothly.
– Then it’s a dependency sir, like alcoholism. I want to get rid of this addiction, this disease.
– Humans are created that way.
– Then I refuse to be such a human. Humans, initially were created to see under water with their Nictitating Membranes covering their eyeballs. But see how they have been reduced to just a lump of tissues in the corners of your eyes and mine.
– It took millions of years to get rid of it. That’s evolution. It doesn’t happen in a lifetime.
– Then let my lifetime be the first of many such till we, humans, get rid of the addiction to sleep.

He breathed heavily and had a look which I inferred to be the look of pity and pride.

– Where is you project headed to? You just have got another four months to complete it.
– Sir, I will finish it. Another week and I will make you see with your eyes closed that I am about to slap you.
– Nonsense.

1st December, 1989

– Are you fucking kidding me?
– No, Sir. I need my degree to be extended by an year. And I’m serious. I am not yet done with the project.
– Yes. You haven’t. But you have done a lot and that would get you out of this college, with good grades.

I had been arguing with him for almost two hours but he wouldn’t understand. How could he ask me to leave the project midway? That would be the work of a lunatic, a careless, materialistic person living the life of an insect in this world where he could have done much more, much much more. I had friends who had presented their projects ending their proposals with a shoulder on which future students would build their ideas upon, which I highly doubted. All I had seen till then were shoulders upon weak shoulders – to hell with building on the shoulders of the giants. There were no giants, none at least in that institute. Everyone was an insect, living minuscule lives, worried about getting a job, earning money, competing with their colleagues whom they called friends and trying every other trick to make them look like idiots behind their backs, buying expensive music players and colored televisions to show off to other insects. I had refused to be a part of this. So I said

– Okay sir. I will present my work to the panel.
– Thank you. At least some sense I have instilled in you in the past couple of hours. Tomorrow, 5 pm. Seminar Hall 205.
– Sure. I will be there.

Next Day

– This is outrageous! Do you think we are fools?
– No, Ma’am. I don’t think you are fools.
– Then why do you have a presentation on The Arabian Nights?
– Because it’s a great story, Ma’am. No one had thought of a flying carpet before this happened to the world of literature.
– Get out, I say! Just get out.
– Okay, Ma’am.

Two days later, I was given the Fail Grade in the Research Project. Indraneel asked me to join him for the dinner that night at his home.

– Wash yourself, Scrub, if possible. (He said) I don’t want my house to stink. You’ve got an year now. Get some sleep as well so that you don’t look like a doped baboon. I do not want my family to think I have trained a mad man.

His house was monotonous but with books and photographs. In the name of family, he only had a daughter.

– That was a good dinner. Thank you. Now I will take a leave.
– What’s the hurry? You can spare an evening for us. I will leave you young people to each other. (Looking at his daughter) Put some sense in him.
– Yes, Baba.

He went to his room with a book in his hand and glasses on his face. She,

– How do you capture a memory? (She asked)
– I don’t. Memories are worthless. Better to use the brain for storing ideas and facts.
– Many ideas crop up from memories.
– I have trained my brain to come up with the ideas at the time of having an experience rather than looking at it retrospectively, later.
– Are you trying to be God?
– I don’t believe in God.
– So, what do you believe in?
– That every life can be broken into nanoseconds of productivity, working towards production of ideas that help others understand this universe and develop better ideas. That’s how the society should function. We should always aspire to know the unknown, to do the impossible.
– That’s a heavy ideology. Are you a virgin?
– How do you capture memories?
– I write, or take photographs. Are you a virgin?
– How does it matter?
– You are.
– Yes. How does it matter?
– You know some of the life needs to be for pleasure. Otherwise what’s the use of having a million ideas and rewards when you don’t get to satisfy the basic instinctive cravings.
– I.. I try to evolve away from the instincts.

She suddenly lifted her right hand, and punched me. I, in reaction, tried to block her, but to no avail. She had punched me hard on my face.

– See. That’s self-defence. That’s instinct. (And started to laugh) Come I’ll apply the balm or else it will swell.

And she held my hand and walked me to her room. While entering her room, I looked sideways to see Indraneel peeking through his door, slightly ajar, and turning away. I entered her room to find her bed littered with her lingerie and soft toys.

– Sorry for this. No one enters my room, not even Baba.

3rd January, 1990

– We, she and I, went for a lunch together. I specifically made sure it was just for 45 minutes. I came back to the laboratory three hours later.

17th January, 1990

Indraneel invited me to his felicitation program by a Research Association. I was the only student with whom he had interacted for more than a year.

– Dress well tonight. And pick her up from my house. I will come directly to the venue from a meeting.
– But I have got to finish this module I told you about.
– Stay awake for two more days to compensate. I do not want my daughter to miss this.

She took an hour after I reached her house to get ready. She brushed my shoulder while coming out of the door. She smelt of a concoction of strawberry and wood. My nostrils tingled.

19th March, 1990

She came to my laboratory and broke the circuit while playing with it. I shouted madly at her and asked her to never see me again.

12th May, 1990

We had sex in her room, among the lingerie.

13th, May 1990

I was losing my focus. I hadn’t come up with a single improvement in my Pressure Streamliner and hadn’t even started rebuilding the broken Polarizer Circuit. I sensed that she had turned to nothing but merely an element of distraction, and that her contribution in my life was nothing more than that of a smiling witch, not that I believed in witchcraft. I fixed an appointment with Indraneel for the next day.

14th May, 1990

– How can you do this? That too, to your daughter?
– Son, I am curious, and apologies for breaching the decorum of not delving into students’ personal lives, do you cry?

I didn’t answer. I just stared at him with contempt.

– I used to cry a lot when I was your age. I thought I would never be able to hook up with a girl despite having tens of medals and recognitions from the best of the institutes of the world. I considered myself a loser.
– Where are you getting at?
– Then one day I decided to take a walk at 2 in the morning. After a while, I sat down on the bench in one of the hostel’s gardens. Suddenly a girl, must have been of the same age as me at that time, came out of nowhere and sat next to me. I hadn’t seen her ever in the college. She suddenly said – ‘Never think of not having a partner in your life to be a loss, it can be a boon too. Relationships can suck the time out of you. It can distract you from all of your pursuits and you are left out there in the world like a mediocre, like everyone else.’ Then she came closer and kissed me. My first kiss. When I opened my eyes, she was gone. Nowhere to be seen in the vicinity. I never saw her again. I felt complete, elated. And that’s why I never married. I adopted her when my brother and his wife died. She must have been an year old. Now when I looked at you, I saw my earlier self. Only that you were going in the opposite direction. You were happy with earning rewards and generating ideas. But you were spoiling yourself to death. You didn’t sleep, you didn’t eat, you didn’t bathe. Your very ideas that can become the greatest inventions of our time were on the verge of being dumped into the garbage.
– So?
– Son, we, humans, have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: Death. You were on the way of leading yourself to death. Death, physically and death in the Research Community. The panel that day consisted of some extremely eminent researchers of the industry and you showed them the relationship of a Flying Carpet and a Genie? You needed distraction. You needed distraction so that you could succeed. So that you live on. Otherwise what’s the point of having a million ideas when you don’t have a platform to share or even a life to see them through. You are not a machine, son. You are a human, an advanced one, but a human.
– And therefore you used your daughter? Your own daughter?
– Every nanosecond of every life should be dedicated to actions and ideas that work towards helping others to build greater ideas that benefit the world – that’s what you believe in, don’t you? A section of my daughter’s life was used to help you survive, develop your ideas and your products. And I am not ashamed of it.
– You are a pathetic, shameless freak.

In response, he laughed hysterically. I had never heard such an insane laughter. He kept on laughing for almost a minute and I couldn’t help myself but join him. We laughed our hearts out together that evening. I laughed like I never had. And then he stopped suddenly and started staring at me. I stormed off in extreme rage, banging his door behind with a loud thud.

Today

I presented my project in December that year. It was received with great applause and I was promised instantly of a fully-funded fellowship at UCLA. He was not present during the presentation. I never met him or his daughter after that day. She tried to pursue me for a while but I couldn’t respond. The guilt of being the person who led to someone else being reduced to just an object of utility is the biggest guilt I carry till today.

I came to know about his death from a friend of mine who taught in the same institute. ‘Your professor passed away today’ – he said. And as he said those words, tears rolled out of my eyes. That day, I cried for the first time. I immediately wiped them off, unable to bear the pain of my submission to the basic emotion of melancholy. But the tears didn’t stop.

Son, I am curious, and apologies for breaching the decorum of not delving into students’ personal lives, do you cry?

She is probably out there, living her life with maybe her daughter and her husband, unaware of the fact that many inventions and discoveries that benefit the world today and would do so in the future have, including my work on Eyes for the Blinds, been built upon her shoulders. On the shoulders of a giant. Her name, I still remember.

Reference:
“We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: Death” – Umberto Eco